“Time Is a Mother” by Ocean Vuong

Like the rest of the literary world, I was stunned by Ocean Vuong’s delicate masterpiece, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”. Vuong’s second book of poetry, “Time is a Mother” was born of the story of his mother and pain of her loss told as a poem. Processing alongside a world tripping into pandemic panic, Vuong created this stunning book of poetry that reveals layers of haunting grief.

“I was grieving, the world was grieving, and the only thing I really had was to go back to poems.”

This tender book took me a while to get through. Each morning I savor a poem while sipping on my coffee, letting Vuong’s words skitter and flit across my mind. Though I’m no stranger to grief, in these poems I’m reminded of how nuanced and complex our grief is: layers of collective grief, trauma, loss, war, displacement - interwoven in and through imagery as delicate and translucent as tissue paper.

My favorite poems in this collection are “Not Even” and “Dear Rose”, both demonstrating Vuong’s quintessential style with words: edgy, raw and vulnerable with a hit of ethereal. Invite this book to slowly reveal itself and its author’s hard-won wisdom: life and death sit side by side and we must somehow, some way, learn to embrace both.

#grief #griefbooks #deathliteracy #deathdoula #timeisamother #poetry